Rep. Tom DeLay says he made the decision to leave Congress after taking a poll in his Texas district which showed he had no better than a 50-50 chance of winning reelection this November.

In a long discussion with conservative journalists Tuesday afternoon, DeLay discussed the Republican primary he faced last month, which he won with 62 percent of the vote. While some observers called that an impressive win, given the controversy that surrounds DeLay, the congressman himself said that was when he knew he had a problem.

"After the primary  you get a sixth sense about this stuff," DeLay said. "You know your district...You don't need polls, but we ran a poll anyway. And the poll showed, basically, that I had a 50-50 chance of winning." DeLay said he had commissioned a similar poll late last year, and "the one after the primary was slightly worse than the one in December"  suggesting that his support was shrinking.

"Sixty-two percent was kind of a lift around here," DeLay said. "People gave me a lot of credit for 62 percent. But for a 21-year incumbent, 62 percent  I mean, it's good, but it should have been 70-percent-plus. Sixty-two percent means 38 percent voted against me. So I wanted a poll done. We did the poll. I was going to spend whatever it took to decide what I was supposed to do, whether to get in or get out."

DeLay said that after the primary, "I spent a lot of time in prayer. Spent all the time in prayer." He said he talked to a number of people who are close to him, and he got the impression that he should stay in the race. "I thought right after the primary, I was supposed to go through this," he said. "What's that saying? Hardened by fire? But as time went on it was quite evident that I was supposed to evaluate the election and face reality, and the reality was I wasn't supposed to go through this, that I am supposed to get involved outside the House. I can do more good outside the House in the next few months than being locked in the 22nd District trying to fight a reelection campaign."

"I have a very strong base, an incredibly strong base," DeLay continued. "I've never seen anything like it. People that would die for me. I also have a very strong opposition that would kill me if they could get hold of me."

Such polarization, DeLay said, left very few undecideds. "What's left are soft moderate Republicans," DeLay explained, "and independents that will vote for anybody but Tom DeLay, that believe for whatever reason that he's a crook, or where there's smoke, there's fire, so the beating that I've been taking has had that impact. And what I saw was it would take a ton of money to take that small group that I could appeal to and turn them around  in the face of getting beat up every day by the mainstream media and paid-for 527s."

DeLay attributed many of his problems to Ronnie Earle, the Texas county district attorney who has indicted DeLay on campaign-finance charges. "He used this case to drag my name through the mud," DeLay said, "and he has abused the grand jury-process to drag my name through the mud."

The problem, DeLay explained, was the interplay of Earle's investigation and a House GOP rule that requires members of the leadership to step down if they are indicted. "I truly believe that the only reason I was indicted is because we have that stupid rule  that is, politically, the stupidest thing we've ever done," DeLay said. The rule, he continued, in essence "allows the Democrats to pick the Republican leadership."

"But we have it," DeLay continued. "I honored it."

Now that he will soon be out, DeLay said, he feels confident that a Republican will win the seat from his district, which President Bush carried with 64 percent of the vote in 2004. "People say, isn't this a defeat?" DeLay said. "No, it's an incredible victory. Because the 22nd District is going to have a Republican fill that seat, guaranteed. That's what my polls show. Any Republican running as a Republican will walk into that seat."

DeLay also predicted that his departure from the race will hurt the candidacy of Democratic challenger Nick Lampson, who has benefited from support and money from Democrats all around the country who wanted to see DeLay go down in defeat. "Nick Lampson's money is going to dry up," DeLay said. "He's going to have to talk about what he believes in. He's got as bad a liberal Democrat voting record as Sheila Jackson Lee. We've done our opposition research, and he does not fit this district. I consider that a victory....We will have a Republican, and I will be out doing what I do best, and that is strategizing to lead the conservative cause and elect Republicans."

When the talk turned to the Abramoff scandal, and the guilty plea of former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, DeLay said he had no idea that Rudy had been engaged in any criminal activity.

"The leadership office is a whirlwind of activity all day long," DeLay said. "There are things going on constantly. Maybe my management style is suspect. But we hired and had and always have had one of the best staffs on the Hill. Why? Because I hired people that wanted to accomplish the same things that I wanted to accomplish, and I have given them responsibilities and have trusted them to carry out those responsibilities. Unfortunately that trust was mishandled, obviously, by Tony Rudy. He admitted to it. That disappoints me greatly. But it had nothing to do with me."

DeLay said he has not seen the Rudy plea agreement. One section of that agreement says that, "In March and April 2000, Rudy obtained a letter from Representative #2 [DeLay] to an Executive Branch official opposing a postal rate increase that would have harmed one of Abramoff's clients." When asked about that, DeLay said he suspected that Rudy knew DeLay would be opposed to such an increase and tried to profit from that knowledge. "Frankly, what it sounds like from what I read in the media was that they were trading off of knowing that I would already be in those positions," DeLay said. "I have always opposed postal rate increases. So you know this one's coming up, DeLay's going to be against it, so I'm going to make some money off of it, telling so-and-so and so-and-so that I can get DeLay to be against it. Maybe that's what they were doing, it sounds like to me."

As for another former aide, DeLay said he "ran off" Michael Scanlon. "Scanlon  we didn't fire him, but we found him another job," DeLay said. "I'm not surprised about Scanlon, but I am shocked and surprised about Tony Rudy."

As for himself, DeLay said he asked his lawyers to do a thorough review of all of his dealings in Congress. "I spent a lot of money and four months of lawyers investigating me as if they were prosecuting me," DeLay said. "They have looked at everything that I've got for 20 years, the whole time I'm here, and there ain't nothing."

"There is absolutely nothing illegal in my operation. There's nothing untoward. There's nothing unethical. We also cooperated with the Department of Justice, given them everything we've got."

"They asked for it?"

"No. We just gave it to them."

"You volunteered?"

"Yes."

DeLay said the material he gave the Justice Department included "anything connected to Tony Rudy, Ed Buckham, Abramoff, or Scanlon." Beyond that, DeLay said he has had no contact with prosecutors. "None," he said. "And they have told my lawyers I'm not a target of the investigation. Of course, we have been saying that for three months and the press refuses to write about it."

Finally, DeLay addressed the work he did on the issue of lobbying and the so-called "K Street Project." "I am actually very proud of the K Street Project," DeLay said. "When we came in, I realized right away in 1995 that we may have taken the majority, but we haven't changed the culture of Washington, D.C. And I immediately started strategizing to change that culture. I mean, how in the world could you maintain a majority up here if all of K Street were Democrat lobbyists that owed their power and their checkbook to the Democrats, and their friends who were out of power?"

"We put together, I think, one of the largest and strongest political coalitions ever. We turned the culture from K Street contributing 70 percent of its campaign funds to Democrats and 30 percent to Republicans to today 60 percent Republican, 40 percent Democrat....It was so well done that the Democrats hate it, and they're working as hard as they can to destroy it."

"When we came in, I realized right away in 1995 that we may have taken the majority, but we haven't changed the culture of Washington, D.C. And I immediately started strategizing to change that culture. I mean, how in the world could you maintain a majority up here if all of K Street were Democrat lobbyists that owed their power and their checkbook to the Democrats, and their friends who were out of power?"

And therein lies the problem, of the fall of the class of '94. Delay helped knee-cap the conservative reform movement early on.

He was concerned to a much greater extent of party over principle, and neglected to consider that voters put in a GOP majority on the basis of change and reform, and not for any particular affection for the party.

If '94 was to stand for anything, it was to shrink the size and reach of the Feds. Part of that means shrinking the power of lobbyists too, not just switching who K street gives money to, for re-election campaigns. If people still want that nonsense, it should have been moved down to state level, as much as humanly possible.

Interesting that Delay fingers soft moderate Republicans as the difference between winning and losing in '06. His own primary contest showed that a good chunk of the conservative base voted against him. Much of the rest were too loyal not to do their job.

Good riddance. Delay, while great in the minority, decided that when the GOP came to power the most important thing to do was to replace a democratic pork and patronage machine with a GOP one... and thus the end of the modern conservative movement.

2
posted on 04/04/2006 6:23:00 PM PDT
by Rodney King
(No, we can't all just get along.)

DeLay is an honorable man and has been an excellent House leader. There are precious few like him in D.C. I've never heard of another elected representative who voluntarily stepped down for the good of his party, have you?

4
posted on 04/04/2006 6:39:26 PM PDT
by Carolinamom
(I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. ---Ronald Reagan)

DeLay's chief of staff Tony Rudy took a plea bargain last Friday. That was obviously the trigger for DeLay to step down. Whether DeLay came to the realization that he was hurting the party, or he was trying to save himself, or the strain on his family became too great remains to be determined. We also do not know if DeLay was surprised by the plea bargain.

The rats and media besmirched a good man and a great Republican. This is politics at its worst with no resemblance to reality.

Only the future will tell, but I hope DeLay comes back to politics. The reason he had been a target for so many years is because he was an effective vote counter and fundraiser. DeLay/Ascroft 08

7
posted on 04/04/2006 6:45:35 PM PDT
by Once-Ler
(Beware conservatives whose political consistency dictates all Presidents must be impeached.)

I don't get it. We complain when Republican politicians don't fight hard enough to enlarge our majority and we complain when they fight too hard. I guess we need Goldilocks to pick our politicians so they fight just the right amount.

His demeanor was he same on Brit's show tonight. He said that he thought he'd be more effective now that he will be out of Congress. Given the present climate, I think so too. He has effectively neutalized the dems plan to make him a target. (Sometime down the road, I hope Ronnie Earle gets his comeuppance.)

15
posted on 04/04/2006 7:02:31 PM PDT
by Carolinamom
(I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. ---Ronald Reagan)

It rare to find a Republican willing to sacrifice his career for the good of the party. And besides DeLay has a lot of legal bills to pay off - not something easily done on a House member's salary. In addition, it drains out the momentum from the Democrats drive to take back the House - an easily identifiable symbol of Republican excess and corruption is gone. The Democrats managed to get rid of DeLay but they'll probably wish they had him to kick around. Its like the old saying goes that in their case, no good deed goes unpunished.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

17
posted on 04/04/2006 7:03:09 PM PDT
by goldstategop
(In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)

There's two ways of thinging about this, if the goal is for a conservative majority, and not simply a party affiliation majority.

First, one strategy is to polorize the electorate, such that the "moderates" choose what they see as the lesser of two evils. We hope they see a conservative GOP as such. This works because it gets their votes, but deprives them of significant power.

Another way, and the more honorable one, is to convert people to conservatism. Find issues that hit close to them on a more personal/local level, and pursuade them that a change in politics can affect change in their lives. How much more this can be done, who knows? But can you honestly say that Delay made more Americans conservative? Or did he just squeeze more dollars to the right?

It is becoming apparent that the people running this party nowadays are becoming more detached, more elite, and answer to money, not as much to the people who vote them in. NOT a recipe for success, because we are too smart for that.

And yes, we do need to pick politicians that will do just the right thing. Better than getting scalded.

Delay is one shrewd man. I believe he made the decision now because he knew the McKinney fiasco would provide perfect cover. Because of McKinney's incessant and irritating magpie squawkings, the Democrats have been preoccupied and unable to really mount a well-coordinated media blitz to rally the troops around the Delay-ethics theme they've been working hard to make the centerpiece of their election year strategy.

DeLay told Brit tonight that it took him 4 weeks to make this decision. You demean this man when you speculate that Cynthia McKinney's latest example of her despicable arrogance has anything to do w/that decision IMO.

27
posted on 04/04/2006 7:21:51 PM PDT
by Carolinamom
(I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. ---Ronald Reagan)

Bless you for that comment. I think DeLay is a good man who could not withstand the concerted attacks coming from the left and even within his own party. "I can do more good outside the House in the next few months than being locked in the 22nd District trying to fight a reelection campaign." This statement says it all. He definitely CAN do a lot of good in the coming months without the worry of a campaign. We have a lot of serious issues on our plate and we need a strong man like Tom DeLay to beat the crap out of the looney left. (Figuratively speaking of course).

Delay was my congressman for awhile and everything I know about him is top notch. I can't believe people here will turn on him after what he has done for his country and his party. He hasn't been found guilty of anything. Anyone can call names and accuse. If Delay is found guilty of anything, they better have photo's and recordings or I won't believe it. As far as I'm concerned, he is founder quality. His character is above reproach.

What makes people angry is that he got things done. Look what we have left. We can't even plug the border with the wimps we have now.

... What's left are soft moderate Republicans," DeLay explained, "and independents that will vote for anybody but Tom DeLay, that believe for whatever reason that he's a crook, or where there's smoke, there's fire, ...

Don't put me in this box, "MR" Delay. Where there is smoke there IS fire.

I live in Tom's district and have said, and posted, for years that if Bush lost the second term, Tom would not run again in 06 and if Bush won Tom would not run in 08. He's tired and has lots on his plate in this area. He will make more money and have more fun outside politics.

I truly believe elective office is behind him.

35
posted on 04/04/2006 7:47:31 PM PDT
by HoustonCurmudgeon
(Justice and "The Law" are not always the same thing.)

Let's not delude ourselves. DeLay did not step down for the good of the party, rather because he knew his indictment was imminent. If it was really for the good of the party, he would finish the rest of his term, while bowing out of the next election. Instead, he is taking an early retirement, beginning in June.

DeLay is an honorable man and has been an excellent House leader. There are precious few like him in D.C. I've never heard of another elected representative who voluntarily stepped down for the good of his party, have you?

1. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on honorable man, but I have my doubts.

2. He was a piss-poor house leader who destroyed the conservative movement by pushing the idea that the most imporant thing was establishing a GOP patronage machine, not pushing for the principles that made them a majority in the first place.

3. Yes, I do. Tom Coburn and the other honorable few from the class of '94 who stuck with their term-limit pledges.

39
posted on 04/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PDT
by Rodney King
(No, we can't all just get along.)

That's too bad. Delay possesses amazing political instincts and powerful leadership skills. He drew the full force of the liberal attack because because he was so dangerously effective. We need more like him. A lot more.

Yes, he was very powerful and very effective...the problem is that in the majority he used that power to create a GOP patronage machine at the expense of principal... if not, if he was so powerful, why are spending earmarkts out of control?

46
posted on 04/04/2006 8:00:34 PM PDT
by Rodney King
(No, we can't all just get along.)

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